Data Compression

Definition - What does Data Compression mean?

Data compression is the process of modifying, encoding or converting the bits structure of data in such a way that it consumes less space on disk.

It enables reducing the storage size of one or more data instances or elements. Data compression is also known as source coding or bit-rate reduction.

Techopedia explains Data Compression

Data compression enables sending a data object or file quickly over a network or the Internet and in optimizing physical storage resources.

Data compression has wide implementation in computing services and solutions, specifically data communications. Data compression works through several compressing techniques and software solutions that utilize data compression algorithms to reduce the data size.

A common data compression technique removes and replaces repetitive data elements and symbols to reduce the data size. Data compression for graphical data can be lossless compression or lossy compression, where the former saves all replaces but save all repetitive data and the latter deletes all repetitive data.

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